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Product Description
As groundbreaking as REVIVING OPHELIA and Hope Edelman's MOTHERLESS DAUGHTERS, A BRIGHT RED SCREAM is a compelling investigation of why so many people deliberately hurt themselves and what can be done to help them. This is an illness that was outed on a global scale when Princess Diana admitted hurting herself deliberately, and it continues to be practised mainly by middle-class women who start in their teens and self-harm throughout their lives. Most cutters are women who have been emotionally, sexually, or physically abused as children, but Strong's research shows that self-mutilation appears in other groups. There are powerful first-person stories, in which cutters describe their ritualistic methods and somewhat addictive cravings for seeing their own blood. Though research is in its infancy, therapists say there are now promising treatments -- from medication to intensive psychotherapy -- for the millions of 'cutters'. Strong reveals what the afflicted and those close to them can do to start a process of healing.
Amazon.com Review
"A bright red scream" is how one of the subjects Marilee Strong interviews in this chilling yet compassionate study of self-mutilation describes the sensation of intentionally inflicting pain upon oneself. It is a compulsion that, while shocking and bewildering to most people, affects 2 million or more Americans and countless others around the globe--one of whom, the late Princess Diana, also suffered from the eating disorders that characterize between 35 to 80 percent of all cutters. Rejecting the classic psychiatric wisdom that views self-mutilation as a species of suicidal behavior, Strong links the phenomenon instead to the will to live--often in the face of such overwhelming childhood abuse that the resulting dissociative behaviors are something akin to posttraumatic stress disorder. Strong touches on other issues as well: Why are most cutters women? And is the current fascination with tattooing and piercing, from its most extreme forms in the "alternative" culture to its growing mainstream acceptance, a sublimation of the cutters' instinct? Through interviews with more than 50 self-injurers, Strong tells the moving story not only of their rage and self-punishment, but also of the courageous journey towards reintegration. (The book also contains an introduction by psychiatrist Armando R. Favazza, author of Bodies Under Seige, one of the leading clinical experts on self-mutilation.) --Patrizia DiLucchio
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